Come, Follow Me

John 1:1-18

Our congregation, as you may know, has begun a short study on what it means, from our understanding, to follow Jesus. It is a five-week study that is based in our groups. In this sermon, I explore some ideas around what it means to follow Jesus.

I have been captivated recently with the thought of how humbling, amazing and astounding it is that God would invite us into a relationship with himself, and that is what I think it means to follow Jesus. After all, God already has everything he needs, and lives--has lived eternally--in a satisfying relationship of love and mutuality within the realm of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So why does he need me. Well, he doesn't. He doesn't need me, but rather desires me, and that is amazing.

In this sermon I explore just a bit the nature of the trinity and I play around with the word "perichoresis", which was used by the church fathers in an attempt to capture the nature of the relationship between the persons in the Godhead. I say attempt because all human reasoning about this falls short at some level or another. If you are interested, wikipedia has a good article here and another article here that works at the etymology of the word and its use in theology. What I say in the sermon is a very, very shallow introduction.

The four ways I mention that "follow" is often understood, or practiced, in today's world of Christianity are elaborated further in the book With by Sky Jethani (Thomas Nelson, 2011). You likely will be hearing me talk about these concepts more in the future.

You can view the video we used in worship. You may recognize the video from the opening of Contact staring Jodi Foster, and the voice over was inspired, in part, by a paragraph in With (page 100).

Thanks for digging deeper.